2012 Holden Captiva Pricing and Specs

Your mechanic is right in deciding that a leak between the engine and gearbox will need the two components to be split to access the problem. Whatever it turns out to be. It could be a broken torque converter which would be expensive, or a simple oil seal which may cost just a few dollars. Either way, though, the labour involved in fixing even that cheap oil seal is going to make this an expensive operation.

Sometimes, you just have to let it go and cut your losses on a car that is starting to become worn out. To be honest, the Holden Captiva was not the most reliable or durable car ever made and many owners have discovered the hard way that this Holden badged car was actually a Daewoo, and not a good Daewoo at that.

Any remedy can only be suggested once you know what’s causing the problem. The first step, then, is to have the car scanned to see if there’s a problem the on-board computer has identified and logged. Once you have that information, you are a lot closer to knowing what to replace.

Logic suggests that an engine that runs roughly when it’s cold might be running lean. If that’s the case, it could be caused by many things including worn injectors, a lazy fuel pump or even a temperature sensor that is not telling the computer that controls these things that the coolant temperature is low and the engine needs more fuel to compensate. Then, once the engine has warmed up, the fuel-air mixture is correct and the engine settles down and runs properly. That said, 30km is a long time for the engine to take to warm up.

You could spend lots of time and money replacing the wrong bits here, so a scan is definitely the way to proceed.

Plenty of cars suffer this problem as they age. Consider that every time the vehicle is used, one or more door handles is being operated. Throw in the fact that the quality of these Holden Captivas was a bit sketchy in the first place, and you can see why the years and duty cycles of the door handles can catch up with them. Fortunately, it's not a huge job to replace the handle and new handles are available form lots of outlets including online sellers.

The Captiva was not alone in this problem, and many makes and models have a history of door handles breaking. Again, it's usually through wear and tear and cheap materials in the manufacturing process at fault.